The news-horn of VG247 has sounded: Ubisoft will be releasing Eric Chahi’s quirky terraforming God-sim From Dust on PC on 27th of July. We still don’t know all that much about this game, but a little more is revealed in the latest developer diary which is, conveniently, posted below. We seem to lack God-sims of late, so I am looking forward to seeing how my insane whims and weird omnipotence might threaten the lives of tiny hat-wearing people.

I’m not sure. I think it can be a cool game, but maybe this will become too monotonous. You know, fire, floods, lava, sand. Maybe sickness? Or hunger? Still can count it on two hands. Dunno.
But i still do like the idea of this innovative sandbox game.

I’m with Rich, all I ever did in Black & White was beat the pets black and blue ‘cuz I thought the noises they made were funny. That, and you could get them to eat their own feces. My pets grew up to be assholes.

Uhh so cool!. Here i move a bit of ground. Here a bit of water to douse a fire. Here i move rocks to change a river. Here i make this mountain higher to protect the tribe. Here i join two isles so the tiny people can move.

Yeah, there’s really no reason why doing this stuff repeatedly is necessarily any less fun than shooting men in the face repeatedly (which is is), and plenty of reasons why it could potentially be more fun.

Wilson:
personally i don’t like either. I like being in a hanging cage and discovering that if i push left and right i can make it fall upon an alien. That doesn’t have neither shooting nor populous nonsense, it wasn’t even repetitive since it was a one-time action. I’d like games with a good story, a main character, a normal adventure(make it scifi, ftw), not crazy savages and gods. Cmon!

Ubisoft? So… packed full of all that DRM goodness we legitimate customers love so much? No thanks. It’s a shame, looks like a fantastic game, but if they’re going to treat the people who legitimately buy their games like potential thieves, they can take a hike.

@Vinraith – A good point.
Yeah, if there’s no/minimal/bearable DRM on a particular game I have no problem buying it, generally regardless of a publisher’s behaviour with their other games. In theory it may even go a small way towards demonstrating that people prefer games with reasonable DRM and are willing to pay for them.

I’ll wait until UBI do something to change my mind… Like maybe apologise to PC Gamers, admit their Draconian DRM was wrong, and promise it’ll never be in another of their games… before I do change my mind. Until then, they aren’t getting the benefit of the doubt.

I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt, I fully expect them to screw this up, I’m just saying that perhaps we should actually wait to find out how they’re going to screw it up before launching into tirades about not buying the game. :)

Tirade? Really? I think that’s a little heavy. I said with UBI’s DRM I’m not going to buy this. Hardly a tirade now is it? I’m just saying UBI DRM == No Sale. Is there something wrong with letting people know that’s how I feel about this situation?

If the DRM is locking you out of the game, then get a working version from, say, the piratebay.
…
After you’ve bought a legit version, ofcourse, is it really still piracy if it’s the only way left to play the game you’ve bought?

@Unaco
It was my intention neither to insult you (“tirade” probably was too strong, though it’s difficult to read tone over the inernet) nor even to really disagree with you (I share your concern over the likely inclusion of problematic DRM with the game), I meant only to say that that protesting the DRM would probably best wait until we know what the DRM is. I apologize if it came off as though I were trying to keep you from speaking your mind, that most certainly was not (and is never) my intention.

Who is passing assumptions as fact here? Seriously… Show me where someone is passing assumption as hard fact in this discussion!

Have I said “I’m not buying this because it’s filled with UBI DRM!” ? No, I haven’t… I am not passing my assumption that this will have uncomfortable DRM as fact that it will have DRM. What I have said is “IF this this is filled with UBI DRM, as UBI are wont to do with their PC games, I won’t be buying this”. Notice the questions mark in the second sentence of my OP, and the statement “but if they’re going to treat the people….” (my emphasis) – the use of ‘if’ in this situation is to introduce a conditional clause or sentence. A conditional sentence contains two clauses, the protasis (or condition), and the apodosis (or consequence). In the event the condition is met, the consequence will occur. In this situation, the protasis is that this game will be shackled with UBI DRM, and the apodosis is that I will not be buying this. That is, IF the game has DRM, I will not buy it. That is, I am discussing a hypothetical.

Some people say “buy it and then play the pirate version”, but buying it encourages them to keep DRMing.

Some people say “just pirate it”, but that seems too much like looking for an excuse to commit piracy, and it may encourage them to DRM harder, or give up on the PC platform.

I’ve personally been sticking with “don’t play their DRMed games at all”, which is the only 100% morally correct approach to all this, but may still convince them to give up on PC (and means I don’t get to play stuff).

I wonder if there’s a fourth option, one that’s more productive than the above. Send them an angry letter with a reduced sum of money (price of game minus “DRM penalty”)? Buy a price-equivalent quantity of their non-DRMed titles, so you still pay them and also boost sales of their non-DRMed stuff?

Meh. Hopefully this isn’t an issue for From Dust, because this is looking like one of the only post-DRM-fiasco Ubisoft games I’m actually interested in.

It’s a shame it’s single player only perhaps a multiplayer mode where you have to kill off the other tribes people will surface as DLC, you know the version of populous I have been waiting MY ENTIRE BLOODY LIFE.

Anybody else want the game Sp4rkR4t just described? sounds interesting. you’d like build up your people, then use the worship-power from their celebrations of how great you have been treating them to unleash disasters upon your opponents tribes, who would in turn do the same to you.

Wonder how much it costs! Can’t see myself being able to pay full whack right now, but geeez. Looks absolutely fascinating. I’ve been keeping an eye out on this game since it was first announced last year, but seeing the gameplay footage… wow. Edge weren’t exaggerating when they called it “primal”.

Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this be good. Please let this not have shitty DRM.

Wiki for settlers 7 says… “In response to the above (always on DRM issue) it appear that Ubisoft have disabled the requirement for all players to be permanently connected throughout game play. They still need though an internet connection to launch the game”

I don’t think it’s necessarily that people aren’t following the news. Ubi has backed off of the “always-on” stance but still requires an internet connection to launch the game, and some people simply aren’t satisfied that they’ve backed off enough as a result.

Really? Completely dead? No DRM at all? It’s dead you say, removed from Settlers 7 and Silent Hunter 5? I’ll be able to install, and happily play those games or this game without an internet connection at all? I won’t need to say, activate on install or activate on launch?

I know the always-online DRM was removed (quietly) from several games, and at least 1 other was released without it… but I can’t find any big announcements from UBI saying sorry and stating that they won’t have any DRM like this in the future, or that games will release with it, but it’ll be removed in a patch. It isn’t my fault if they do something that everyone reports about and remembers, and then, when they rectify the situation, don’t scream about it and let us all know.

If there is no DRM, and the game is as good as we’re all hoping… then fine, I’ll pick it up and be happy. But, until I see that there’s no DRM on it, or until UBI come out and tell me the DRM is gone, dead and buried never to return, I’m going to remain sceptical.

For me, “always on” DRM meant I wouldn’t buy at any price, “connect-on-start” DRM means I won’t buy above “rental” price (~$5, depending on the game, certainly no more than $10).
Really, connect-on-start is still pretty crappy, it only looks good because of how incredibly bad its predecessor was. Another case of bastardry creep, I’m afraid.

Edit: And apparently I failed to hit the “reply” button there. Ah well.

Don’t mean this as criticism of vinraith, but I always get a chuckle out of people going online and posting “omg I refuse to play this game that requires an internet connection!” I don’t really like the “must be online to launch the game” aspect, either, but people were doing that when the SecureROM one-time activation thing first came out as well (and that’s probably the least invasive form of copy protection ever, including CD checks which are awful).

“The internet” is not one giant pulsating blob. Have fun when Ubisoft goes out of business, or simply decides that it’s no longer economical to keep their activation servers for older games running*. Oops, your legitimate copy is now entirely worthless.

Yes yes, pirates are our archivists, blah blah blah. It’s still a shitty principle to support. If I buy a book, I own a copy of a book, not a “license”. I can do whatever I want with that book, regardless of external factors; copyright merely restricts my right to make a copy. Not so with DRM’d computer games.

* UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONE OR MORE SPECIFIC ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE PUBLISHED

A boycott is only effective if you boycott the company. Its why I find so many of these game “boycotts” quite bizarre.

Of course, in a case like UbiDRM, what you actually want to do is send the message that it reduces sales, so you should not purchase silly-DRM games, and buy the ones from ubi without it (that you actually want to play of course)

I normally can’t stand playing strategy games, but there’s just something about herding a bunch of dumb AI creatures indirectly through the environment that instantly appeals to me.I can imagine these types of games are infuriating to people who play real strategy games, tho.

From what this video have shown, it seems like a (very) pretty terrain deformation tool with very few gameplay features and hardly any interaction with your followers. It does have appeal as a modern kind of sandbox I suppose but if taken as a game it doesn’t seem that exciting, Black & White is probably better in that regard.